94-Year-Old on a Mission to Visit Every Continent with Her Grandson Didn’t Get First Passport Until She Was 91

Joy Ryan didn’t get her passport until she was 91. In fact, she hardly traveled at all until she was 85. “I grew up in Ohio in the country. I never did anything very exciting until I started this adventure,” Joy, now 94, tells PEOPLE.

By this adventure, she means traveling the world with her 43-year-old grandson, Brad Ryan. The adventurous pair reached Antarctica on Wednesday, Dec. 11 via a hybrid battery-powered cruise ship with HX (Hurtigruten Expeditions). It’s their fourth continent together, and marks the halfway point of their mission to visit every continent together.

“She told me in her 80s that she wished she had seen more of the great outdoors in her life. She told me she had never seen a mountain," Brad explains. "She said it with such resignation and I just thought you know what? It doesn’t have to be this way."

On a mission to show her at least one mountain, Brad took "Grandma Joy," as she’s affectionately known, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2015. “I slept in a tent, I climbed a mountain. All for the first time all at age 85,” she says.

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The joy they felt during that first trip inspired them to see more, and planted the seed for a farfetched dream: to visit every national park in the United States together. “It turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than I thought,” laughs Brad.

But from volcanoes in Hawaii, to spotting brown bears catching salmon in Alaska, they trekked on and chronicled their journey on Instagram, gaining fans and fame along the way. The duo managed to make their dream a reality, and in 2023, Joy became the oldest person to visit all 63 U.S. National Parks.

“It was just like a dream come true. I swear. I never dreamed that I'd make it. It was really an amazing thing,” Joy tells PEOPLE.

The National Park of American Samoa was their final park, and Joy needed a passport to reach it. So at 91, she got her very first passport. And once she had it, she figured why not add a few more stamps? So, a new idea was born to visit every continent together.

“It was thrilling to get a passport because I just never thought that I would ever get one. And now here I am in this beautiful place,” Joy tells PEOPLE from Antarctica. “I’m getting to see beautiful mountains and glaciers and penguins and whales.”

To underscore her point, she excitedly adds, “I see three or four penguins out the window right now...And they’re sliding down the snow on their bellies.” 

Of reaching the ice continent, a bucket list destination barely one percent of the population has ever seen, she says “It is just truly amazing. That's really all there is to it.”

While this is not Joy and Brad's first cruise (the pair recently visited the Galapagos as part of the South America leg of their travels), they are loving ship life. "There's a big Explorer's Lounge and we just sit and marvel out the windows at perfect panoramic views," says Brad. They've also started a new nightly ritual of heading to the lounge, ordering a drink — a cocktail for Brad, a mocktail for Joy — and listening to the on board piano player while reminiscing about what they saw that day.

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Grandma Joy says she’s lucky to also have a grandson willing to take her all over the world. As for Brad, he feels grateful he’s in a position to make all this possible for her.

In fact, the pair express how lucky they feel to have each other, period. Joy has outlived her husband and her three children, including Brad’s dad. “She’s been a widow for over 30 years,” says Brad. “She had every reason to be depressed, but even before our travels she found ways to be engaged with her community and to be joyful. She's a remarkable, fearless woman.”

So where’s next on their list after they finish their bottom-of-the-world cruise? "This trip is just the literal tip of the iceberg,” Brad jokes with PEOPLE.

To start, in January they'll be chasing the Northern Lights in Iceland. “Then I hope the next trip is somewhere warm,” quips Joy. Luckily for her, the pair plans to lead a trip to see orangutans in Borneo in September.

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Brad says that traveling with his grandma has changed his perspective on life, and hopes her courageous spirit will inspire others too.

“We just treat aging with such dread,” Brad says. “But when you see somebody in their late eighties rolling down a sand dune in Colorado or whitewater rafting in Alaska at age 91 or with whales in Antarctica at 94, you start to say, ‘What's the secret?’ And my grandmother has taught me the secret is to just say yes. Show up for your life. Lean into the possibilities for your life at every age.”

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